A recent article in TES by Claire Fox suggested that ICT is a pretty banal subject, "The Emperor's New Clothes". Sadly this mirrors many teachers’ experience of ICT job applications where Headteachers say exactly the same thing and sometimes use it to justify employing a “real” teacher (English, Maths, PE, D&T...) to teach ICT rather than wasting their money on a “mickey mouse” subject teacher. We have even heard reports of teachers being advised to transfer to a more “sensible” subject.

Certainly many feel that ICT education has in practice degenerated into "training in Office systems", the aim being to inculcate proficiency in MS Word, IE, Excel & Powerpoint. While this is perfectly valid for a training institution, it is so short-sighted (and expensive) for a school.

Having seen a variety of schools’ schemes of work and resources, there is still plenty of practice out there which would suggest that ICT as a discrete subject means copy typing, regardless of whether it is for word processing, spreadsheets, databases or DTP. Those not adopting this approach have sometimes been roundly criticised for it. "Give them a worksheet to type in and keep them quiet. It's only an hour a week after all". One wonders if it is possible to get a job as an ICT teacher unless you are firmly committed to that route.

ICT training/qualifications often feature in the 'Desirables' column yet rarely in the 'Essentials'. MS Office is in fact the most common ICT specific 'Essential'.

'Familiarity with the Thomas Telford GNVQ scheme' is probably the most common KS4 'Desirable'. The “bumpf” then usually makes play on 'this exciting time for ICT', but unfortunately follows it up with mostly low level requirements.

Of course you can argue that the fact that you can find so many vacancies with low level job descriptions, highlights the shortage of ICT staff. There is no doubt that there are many heads who really have no idea what should be in the ICT curriculum (and of course they should know but when many ICT teachers themselves find it difficult to keep up, what chance has a head got?) but it may be that there are also many who just want to get a body in front of the class. If the kids stay quiet and at the end of the year know something they didn't know at the beginning, (even if it's only how to centre a heading without using the space bar) then at least that's a start.

It's pretty frightening that almost 20 years after we first started teaching ICT we're still at this level but it won’t change until there are more people prepared to really teach the subject and not the software. Associations like ACITT can help by publishing more examples of how individuals teach ICT other than just basic Word Processing.

Why haven't we progressed? Why aren't more people prepared to teach ICT? Was it the vogue for cross curricular delivery that held it back? The lack of any one clear lobby to speak with authority? Has the shortage for IT professionals lasted for 20 years? Does IT change too rapidly to build up teachers for the subject? Maybe it's not one but all of these.

Certainly the potential for development of ICT teaching coincided with a dramatic drop in the status of teaching as a profession. At the same time there were any number of careers open to people who were competent in IT and it's perhaps not surprising that many people chose to work in jobs where they felt they would be valued. The last government has been far from perfect but at least David Blunkett has spent more time thanking and praising teachers than previous education secretaries. Salaries have also increased - not massively but they are higher. There are also bonuses being paid to recognise hard work; they're small but at least they show that someone is saying "thanks".

The other problem remains that many heads really don't have a clue about ICT and even in areas of the country where there aren't teacher shortages they're not making any real effort to recognise what's needed.

It's going to be a slow process to get more people who are enthusiastic and competent to come into teaching ICT but the early signs are that it is starting to happen again. Maybe, just maybe, more experts will start to filter back into the system and provide us with some solid examples of how ICT teaching can be.

Banal? Yes training children to use a computer for other subjects is pretty banal. But that isn’t what ICT teaching is all about, that should merely be a by-product.